6 comments:

Believe it or not, I just read this book. It's pretty much what you'd expect from the reviews you quote.

Koestenbuam is an academic who became enraptured with Harpo only recently and decided to create a blow-by-blow account of his film work (though not precisely in chronological order), not as a description of Harpo's comedy, but more as a meditation on his character.

It's written in academic language (or some might think a parody of academic language) and includes numerous, helpful photographs. It's an oddity among Marx Brothers books. It's not easy to read from cover to cover but perhaps Marx Brothers fans might enjoy it as something to dip into here and there.

This book is an atrocity, a crime against humanity. The author should be put before an international tribunal. This is not just the worst book ever on the Marx Brothers, it may be the single most worst book I've ever read. And I can prove it.

I'm going to do a little experiment here. . . the random page test. You'll have to take my word for it, but I swear an oath, I will now randomly pick a page from this book and quote the first few sentences I find.

"Dream: my father, in a surprise appearance, whisked me away to the Metropolitan Opera matinee. I had one or two tickets. I didn't understand the difference between one and two: numbers are philosophical problems. We entered a dark storage room, where our bodies pressed together: reciprocal hardness. The incest taboo didn't cow me. The Marx Brothers seem sexually embroiled even when they ignore each other."

The above paragraph is about (of course), "Go West".

And I'm dead serious, this is a completely random paragraph on a completely random page. It's not a surprise: every single page-- every SINGLE PAGE-- has something intellectually or sexually offensive on it. If ever a book screamed out for the response "Too Much Information", this is it. Unless you're looking for a ponderous, pseudo post-modern, largely indecipherable exploration of Kostenbaum's life long lust for Harpo (and for his own family members.)

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Swordfish

I got a Super-8 projector when I was eight and a Betamax video recorder when I was eleven. I fell in love with Universal horror films in the summer of 1983 and the Marx Brothers the following Christmas. In 1984 I bought my first Halliwell's Film Guide and met the man himself.
That brings us more or less up to date.